Electronic messaging, such as email, is widely used to enable communication between users via computer networks. Often, messages are generated as replies to previous messages and a chain of messages, or a message conversation, is established. A message typically contains a header, containing information such as the network address of the sender and intended recipients, a text-based message body and, optionally, a data file attachment. During the course of a message conversation, multiple data files may be exchanged between the participants in the message conversation.
It may be desired to identify and retrieve messages exchanged during a message conversation. For example, when one or more new participants are added to message conversation, it may be desirable to send some of the previously exchanged data files to the new participants to enable them to participate fully in the conversation. Currently, a user has to choose between forwarding the entire conversation to a new participant or sorting through prior emails to find attachments and manually attaching them to a message. The first approach may be undesirable, since it may be undesirable to send some of the conversation or some of the data files to the new recipients. The second approach requires multiple user steps and is inefficient.
It would be useful to provide a method for efficiently identifying and retrieving messages previously exchanged during a message conversation, and for sending the messages, to new participants in the conversation.